Free Republic

Ten city blocks of Manhattan became a river of black Sunday as 50,000 dark-clad ultra-Orthodox Jews took to the streets to protest Israel's proposal to force their young boys into its army. The gathering took up a stretch of Water Street, with demonstrators standing behind police barricades amid tight security as they prayed in solidarity with their brethren in Israel. 'These kids, a lot of them don't know how to hold a gun. They don't know what physical warfare is,' said Long Island rabbinical student Shmuel Gruis.

JULY 4, 1976 ENTEBBE, UGANDA – Led by Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, crack Israeli commandos race from their airplanes covered by the midnight darkness. Methodically, they approach a non-descript airline terminal, burst inside, killing the stunned terrorists. Helpless and shocked, 103 hostages lift their heads and gratefully weep at the mesmerizing sight of their saviors. As the alarms begin to sound, the Israeli soldiers strike with surgical precision and speed — a lightning bolt of controlled, finely rehearsed fury. It is all over in a few minutes. Terrorists lay dead. The hostages rush out to board the transport planes waiting...

Iran "will investigate how it was exposed, will stop smuggling to Gaza for months" after exposure, source adds. At any given time, Israel's defense establishment is monitoring Iranian arms smuggling and terror-financing networks, a security source revealed on Thursday, a day after the Israel Navy intercepted an Iranian attempt to smuggle powerful rockets to the Gaza Strip on a commercial ship off the coast of Sudan. Currently, IDF Military Intelligence is managing investigations "no less significant" than the Iranian attempt to bring Syrian-made M-302 rockets to Gaza, the source added, describing the covert investigations as part of a far wider...

In the same week that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intercepted a Gaza-bound shipment of Syrian missiles from Iran, President Barack Obama is asking Congress to reduce U.S. funding for Israel's missile defense programs by $200 million, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The grainy footage shows the Klos C, labeled as Panamanian but carrying Syrian missiles and warheads on a Tehran-built ship, being surrounded by Israeli forces as it floats along the Red Sea. Earlier Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon revealed that the ship had embarked from Bandar Abbas, Iran and was en route to Port Sudan.

Palestinians in the village of Abu Dis, which lies just outside of the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, staged a procession over the weekend to mark the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Marxist faction and a member organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Dozens of Palestinians were seen brandishing AK-47 and M16 semiautomatic rifles as well as hand grenades and pistols while clad in military gear, according to Israel Radio. A number of shots were fired in the air during the festivities. .....

GAZA CITY — Thirteen Palestinian protesters were wounded by Israeli army gunfire Friday in clashes near the border fence in the central Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said. Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Hamas-run health ministry, said one man was in serious condition after being shot in the head. Also, a 12-year-old boy reportedly suffered a head injury when he was struck by a tear gas canister, according to Palestinian sources cited by Israel Radio. Qudra said the shooting, not far from Jabaliya northeast of Gaza City, came after the Palestinians threw stones at Israeli soldiers.

Based in the Golan Heights, the 7th Armored Brigade has relied on Merkava Mark II tanks for more than 20 years. An Armored Corps brigade based in the North is set to do away with its aged tanks and begin receiving the IDF’s last word in tank warfare, the Merkava Mark IV, equipped with the Trophy antitank- missile shield. Based in the Golan Heights, the 7th Armored Brigade has relied on Merkava Mark II tanks for more than 20 years. Some of the older tanks were manufactured in the late 1970s, but have since undergone a series of technological upgrades....

Soldiers and Border Police found a large weapons cache in an operation in a Palestinian town in the "seam zone" - the area located east of the 1949 armistice line, and to the west of the Judea and Samaria security barrier. Lieutenant-Colonel Roi Nahari, who heads the regiment which made the discovery, spoke to Arutz Sheva about the operation, which took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning. “The regiment, along with Border Police and other forces, entered the village. Several people who are connected to terrorist activity were arrested, and a large quantity of weapons was discovered,” he...

 But if you doubt the atrocity tales that Islamic supremacists tell, you're a greasy Islamophobe, a genocide denier, and worse.

Taipei, Dec. 31 (CNA) Taiwan's Air Force will showcase its upgraded Indigenous Defense Fighters (IDF) Jan. 16, when the Ching-kuo fighter jets will be armed with locally developed Wan Chien weapons systems, the Air Force said Tuesday. Seventy-one out of more than 120 on-duty IDFs saw upgrades by state-run Aerospace Industrial Development Corp. to reinforce air-to-ground combat capacity on the decade-old jets. To take some of the burden off of the nation's F-16 fleet, Wan Chien (literally "ten thousand swords") systems have been added to the IDFs, giving the fighters the ability to fire cluster bombs with a range of...

Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, the Chief Rabbi of Ramat Gan, has come out with strong statements against mandatory military service for women. Rabbi Ariel was particularly outspoken regarding combat service for women, but made it clear in an interview with Arutz Sheva that he opposes mandatory non-combat service as well. Female soldiers should serve strictly in a volunteer capacity, he declared. […] Rabbi Ariel then made a clear distinction between male and female recruits. “We are against the approach of ‘enslaving’ girls. Women are not combatants. Women and men cannot serve together in the field in combat—it is dangerous to security,...

The Obama administration is pressuring Israeli generals to stop publicly voicing their concerns about the administration’s security proposals in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and instead endorse the administration’s plans, according to Israeli media reports. The administration is seeking a complete or partial IDF withdrawal from the Jordan Valley, where the border between Israel and Jordan lies at the eastern edge of Judea and Samaria, also called the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority has long sought control of the valley. However, Israel and Jordan are opposed to an IDF withdrawal, which they fear would enable the transit of terrorists and arms through Jordan...

The Yediot Aharonot newspaper revealed Tuesday new details of the brutal murders of reservists Yossi Avrahami and Vadim Nurzhitz. The soldiers were lynched in Ramallah in October 2000. The soldiers lost their way to their base on October 12, 2000, ending up in the Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled city of Ramallah by mistake. PA police forces took the two into custody. Word reached local PA residents that undercover Israeli agents were being held in the building; some 1000 rioters reportedly gathered outside. The IDF declined to take action to rescue the soldiers; they were eventually stormed by the rioters. …

The United States and Germany have issued an ultimatum to the IDF, a report Thursday said: No American or German army officers will work with IDF training academies if the army goes ahead with plans to relocate them to Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. The ultimatum could explain why Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced earlier this week that the plan to move them was to be delayed. Sources said that the IDF has begun looking for other sites for its military program as a result. …

IDF soldiers shot dead a Palestinian Authority Arab terrorist and wounded at least five others during a counterterrorism operation in the Samaria (Shomron) region Wednesday. Clashes broke out after Israeli special forces came under fire after being exposed in the course of an undercover operation to arrest local Hamas commander Jamal Abu al-Haija. "Earlier this evening during a counter terrorism activity in Jenin, Palestinians opened fire and threw improvised grenades and explosive devices at security forces," a statement said. Soldiers "retaliated towards the perpetrators in self defense. Several Palestinians were wounded in the exchange of fire" and taken by the...

A Lebanese army sniper killed an Israeli soldier near the border fence near Rosh Hanikra on Sunday night. An initial IDF assessment, based on data from lookout positions on the border, found shots were fired by a soldier from the Lebanese Armed Forces who apparently was acting alone. Six to seven shots were fired at the IDF soldier who was standing on a road adjacent to the electronic border fence with Lebanon.

German daily reports that torpedo-laden destroyers are intended to provide protection for Israel's natural gas installations. Germany has agreed to sell Israel two destroyers in exchange for one billion euros, AFP reported on Saturday, citing a report in German daily Bild. According to the report, the torpedo-laden destroyers are intended to provide protection for Israel's natural gas installations. Bild reported that the head of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's National Security Council, Yossi Cohen, visited Berlin last week. A German government spokeswoman confirmed Cohen's visit, but declined to comment on the nature of his business in Berlin, according to AFP. Israeli...

In previous navy purchases, Germany agreed to cover one third of the cost as a way of expressing its commitment to Israel’s security. Israel is seeking to buy advanced missile boats from Germany to protect drilling operations in its offshore natural gas fields. The government is hoping the deal can be concluded at a cost of about 1 billion euros. Israel previously bought six Dolphin submarines from Germany. The German government agreed to cover one third of the cost of those purchases, as a way of expressing its commitment to Israel’s security. Berlin hasn’t yet responded to the current request,...

After seeing an op-ed headlined, “The Pro-Israel Tent ‘Doesn’t Matter If It Can’t Hold Disagreement,” written by my Brandeis classmates Eli Philip and Catie Stewart which appeared in a Philadelphia Jewish paper and several J Street online sources, I feel compelled to provide much needed additional information and context, so that readers can determine for themselves what is the matter, if anything, with our – and others – pro-Israel tent. In their article, Philip and Stewart describe an incident that occurred at a pro-Israel event on campus earlier in the semester, during which Captain Barak Raz, a former spokesperson for...